Soon after California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced an effort last year to redraw California’s congressional maps in response to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to do the same, he released an ad hyping the move.
As tense music plays, Newsom says the moment represents “a five-alarm fire for democracy” and that President Donald Trump “called Greg Abbott, who doesn’t have the courage, doesn’t have the conscience. And he has rolled over, and he said, ‘Yes, sir, and? ‘”
When Fox News suggested Newsom’s use of the phrase “rolled over” was inappropriate, because Abbott uses a wheelchair, Newsom dug in: “How woke of you to ask!” his office told the network. “I’m sorry Greg’s feelings were hurt. Poor guy – we hope he recovers.”
The episode was a perfect distillation of Newsom’s relationship with the Lone Star State, and its current leader: The rivalry has encapsulated issues both consequential and petty, and both men have gone to great lengths to ridicule each other.
The feud is almost certain to intensify this week, as Trump convenes the Republican Party in Dallas for an unprecedented midterm convention. The president and his allies will likely target Newsom – or “Newscum,” the president’s preferred epithet, and his approach to governing.
Abbott previewed that strategy earlier this year while campaigning for conservative candidates ahead of Texas’ primary elections.
“There are activists and liberal politicians who want to turn Texas into a California-style state with more government, more regulation, and less freedom,” he wrote in a March statement. “That is not who we are.”
Newsom, for his part, is just as eager to draw comparisons. As he builds out a likely presidential campaign, Newsom has made the California-Texas rivalry part of his brand. That includes the success of Prop 50, the ballot measure aimed at giving Democrats five additional House seats in 2026, which Newsom frequently invokes as evidence he is backing up the tough talk with action.
Over the last several weeks, Newsom has traveled to various states key to the 2028 presidential election and framed himself as the Democrat who has most aggressively fought Trump. Last week, Newsom’s “Take It Back” tour took him through Alabama and the Carolinas, where he talked about Prop 50.
Newsom has been working for years to campaign for Democrats in conservative-leaning states through his political action committee, the Campaign for Democracy. He has not formally declared his candidacy for president, but the Campaign for Democracy has helped him build a nationwide network of donors and political supporters.
He’s made Texas and his Prop 50 campaign a big part of that effort. He brought up Abbott less than five minutes into his stump speech at an event Thursday morning in Hardeeville, S.C.
“Donald Trump knows he’s going to lose the midterm election,” Newsom said. “Why else did he make that call last year to Greg Abbott in Texas?”
It’s only the latest example of Newsom using Abbott as a political foil. In 2022, Newsom ran full page ads in the Austin-American Statesman, the Houston Chronicle and the El Paso Times targeting Abbott over the Lone Star State’s abortion ban.
The ads used a quote from Abbott – “Our creator endowed us with the right to life. And yet … children lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas, we work to save those lives.” Newsom’s ad struck the words “abortion” and “Texas” and replaced them with “gun violence” and “California.”
The ads draw on a strategy Newsom has employed for years – taking talking points from conservative politicians like Abbott and turning them against Republicans.
Taxes and the economy
Voters have for years perceived Republicans as stronger on economic issues than Democrats, though economic turbulence from tariffs and the war in Iran has caused Americans to sour on Trump’s handling of the economy. Newsom has sought to exploit that opening as he tries to gain national support, using Texas as his foil.
In a state budget presentation last year, Newsom gloated that twice as many new businesses had been founded in California than in Texas. He also bragged that while California contributed more than $80 billion in federal taxes than it received in federal spending, Texas did the opposite – taking $70 billion in federal funding more than it paid in federal taxes.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally in Houston, Nov. 8, 2025. Newsom touted the passing of Proposition 50, which allows California to redraw all of its congressional districts in response to Gov. Greg Abbott’s plans to redistrict Texas for President Donald Trump. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle)
To justify California’s continued spending on health care for undocumented immigrants, Newsom noted that Texas has the highest uninsured rate and that its hospitals spend billions to provide care for those people.
“You pay the price either way,” Newsom said.
As a final dig, he also noted that California’s much critiqued high-speed rail system, which voters approved in 2008, is farther along than a private high-speed rail effort started in Texas the following year.
As the American public sours on billionaires, Newsom has used Texas to tout his economic populist bona fides. California taxes its wealthiest residents at a much higher percentage than its middle- and low-wage workers, unlike Texas, which has more consistent tax rates across income brackets.
“Texas and Florida tax their lowest-wage earners more than we tax our highest-wage earners,” he said at a press conference this summer. “Those are the high-tax states.”
Taxes have long been a key area where Republicans criticize California.
“This once great State has gone to Hell. Gavin Newscum and the Democrats have done an absolutely horrendous job,” Trump wrote in a June post on social media. “Taxes are the highest of any State in the Country, maybe the World.”
When California lost out on a major investment when shipbuilding company Saronic decided to build its new manufacturing site in Texas instead of Solano County, Newsom attempted to reframe the loss as a critique of Texas. Saronic chose Brownsville for its new building location after being promised more than half a billion dollars in state and local tax credits and incentives.
“It was a massive subsidy. I mean, that’s a race to the bottom in Texas,” Newsom said, pointing out that California dwarfs all other states, including Texas, in venture capital investment. “They don’t do startups. … They just try to compete for the expansion of that increment, and then they write a huge check to subsidize it.”
While it’s true that far more new businesses start in California than Texas, that’s not the case for Saronic, which was founded in Austin. And California subsidizes signature industries as well. Newsom recently approved an expansion of the state’s film and television tax credit to $750 million, for example.
And Newsom has often touted how California’s clean energy regulations and subsidies for electric vehicles allowed Elon Musk’s company Tesla to flourish. In total, the company benefited from more than $3 billion in state subsidies, according to an estimate from Newsom’s office in 2022.
Tesla has since become a major point of discord between California and Texas.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, accompanied by several members of the Texas state Legislature, calls for a new way for California to redraw its voting districts, during a news conference in Sacramento July 25, 2025. (Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)
Musk relocated Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in 2021. In 2024, as he spent big money to help elect Trump, Musk announced he would move his aerospace company SpaceX’s headquarters from California to Texas over the Golden State’s law that prohibited school districts from requiring teachers to out transgender students to their parents. Abbott gloated about the move in June of this year.
“Thanks, Elon,” he posted on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter until Musk purchased it. “And thanks to you too, Gavin.”
There have been rare moments, though, when Newsom and Abbott have been able to set the rivalry aside. Abbott has sent firefighting teams to California to help battle raging wildfires, and Newsom likewise deployed specialized rescue teams to assist with severe flooding in Texas last year.
“California stands with all those who have lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods in the devastating aftermath of these summer floods in Texas,” Newsom wrote.
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This article originally published at As Republicans head to Texas convention, Newsom plays up his favorite rivalry.